MTV: Sex, Drugs, and (almost no) Rock and Roll… FOR KIDS! (Part 4)

Good news, everybody! It’s now OK to watch MTV! Why, might you ask? Because it turns out that MTV is not actually the vanguard of society’s descent into a swirling abyss of Monster Energy Drink, chocolate-scented Axe, Clearasil, and chlamydia. No, it actually turns out that the executives over at Viacom, taking note of the success of the Colbert Report, have decided to try out satire on one of their other networks and have geared MTV’s programming at satirizing the vapidity and misogyny of American culture. Don’t believe me? Get thee over to their website and peep a few episodes of A Double Shot at Love with the Ikki Twins. (I recommend the sixth one.)

It has to be satire, right? Right? RIGHT!?!?!

For those of you who can’t stomach the 20 minutes’ worth of Proactiv commercials one must suffer through in the course of an hour of MTV viewing and are wondering what the samhill I’m talking about, I’ll sum it up by saying that MTV has found a way to make an entire season of television out of the concept behind those “And twins!” Coors Light commercials. You know the ones I’m talking about. They are, quite simply, the most embarrassing thing American culture (which is basically nothing but a giant pile of advertisements) has ever, ever produced. When I’m overseas and meet people from other countries, I cross my fingers and wish upon stars that they’ve never seen these commercials. I often lie awake at night wondering whether the leaders of other nations that possess nuclear weapons have seen these commercials, terrified that they have and are seriously considering nuking the United States in order to protect the rest of the world from our inferior genetic stock and our cretinous culture. Just watch this shit:

Holy shit is right. But it isn’t as if Coors Brewing Co. was the first entity to broach the bizarre subject of dudes thrusting beer bottles up in the air and grabbing their dicks while yelling, “Wooohoooo, gimme some pooosay!” over a set of twins. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been utterly bewildered by the oft-referenced obsession men have with getting the chance to bang twin sisters. I mean, shit, there’s even an episode of Fantasy Island about it. But I never really gave it much thought and just assumed, as I am wont to do, that it couldn’t possibly mean what I thought it meant, that there’s no way people are that gross. Well, people… oh, wait, I mean MEN — are that gross.

MTV’s producers, apparently unsatisfied with the level of salaciousness they had achieved with A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila (see my take on that show here), decided to “step it up” with the new season of the show. Apparently the already completely insane premise of the original show, that a woman who had spent several years turning herself into the one of world’s most well-known and least interesting sex objects had decided to pretend that she was bisexual and was looking for love, just wasn’t ridiculous or offensive enough for MTV. This time, MTV replaced Ms. Tequila with the Ikki twins, two former Hooters waitresses (I swear, both of them worked at Hooters) and car magazine models. That’s right, phony bisexuality wasn’t enough; they had to throw some implied incest into the mix. Because dudes love fake boobs, fake lesbians, fake fingernails, fake blond hair, AND TWINS!

I have to digress for a second. What is the fucking deal with dudes being into twins? Could it actually be that men delight in the idea that women would be willing to commit incest for their viewing pleasure? Goddamn it, I hope not. But I think that’s it. I mean, the majority of male sexuality in this culture revolves around domination and degradation, which is where the male desire to see women pretend to be gay, submit to unenjoyable sex acts, etc. comes from, so it’s only logical, but I really don’t want to believe it.

Back to the Ikki twins. I know it’s hard to believe, but these two women objectify themselves much, much more aggressively than Tila Tequila does, and they’ve got absolutely no sense of irony about it whatsoever. Check out this quote from their bio:

Get ready to meet the Ikki Twins – sexy, spunky and spontaneous, these bisexual twins are double the trouble and double the fun. Being that Rikki was born just a few seconds before her sister, she and Vikki have been inseparable since birth. The girls complete each other’s sentences and even their own father can’t tell them apart!!

Born in Pennsylvania, the twins’ family moved around a lot, living in nine different states before finally settling in Southern California. It was there the girls had two life-changing events – they began modeling and they realized they were both bisexual!!

Rikki was the first to discover that she was interested in girls – in fact she was attracted to girls before guys! Trying to follow “the rules” of society, Rikki suppressed her interest in girls and instead dated guys. But her attraction for women never went away. Rikki kept it private as long as she could, until the day that Vikki admitted that she was also attracted to women and in fact a bisexual. It was that conversation that gave Rikki the comfort she needed to come out as a bi-sexual as well.

At the same time they were learning each other’s secret, both girls were working as waitresses at a local Hooters. No one there could tell them apart, so in an effort to not call the girls the wrong names, they were nicknamed the Ikkis! It was also there that their lives changed forever! One day a coworker asked them to pose for a motorcycle website. As luck would have it, talent manager Dove happened to see those photos and the rest is history!!

Isn’t it cool! They’re both bisexual!!! Isn’t that awesome? Dudes like bisexuals! Especially dudes who like motorcycles and Hooters hot wings!!! Isn’t it lucky that they’re twins, that they’re both hot, and that they’re both bisexual!?! Rad! And who needs “the rules” of society? That shit’s gay (real gay, not hot gay).

Tila Tequila spent two entire seasons on the show proving to the young adult world that nothing is more important than getting people to want to fuck you (other than being on TV, of course) and that sexual manipulation is the only thing worth being good at. But Tila Tequila, as gross as she and her show might have been, was at least aware of how absurd the concept of the show was. Ms. T might be an embarrassment to womankind, and she might be the narcissistic, patriarchy-approved sell-out of the century, but she’s not stupid and she’s probably not evil. One got the distinct impression that she knew that there was something odd and kind of sad about asking 24 people to repeatedly humiliate themselves on national television for the chance to get naked and have empty sex with a woman with a barbed-wire strewn heart tattoo that says “C’est la vie!” in the middle. While it was obvious that she enjoyed the idea that they were willing to do so, you could also tell she felt a little sorry for them. And while she made the ridiculous claim that her show deserved the credit for the California Supreme Court’s decision to allow gay marriage (before Prop. 8), it was obvious that she wasn’t actually bisexual and that she knew that very few of the women on the show were actual lesbians. And that she knew the whole thing was a big game.

Not so with these two. They’ve gotten down with the titillation plan to the point where they truly believe that catering to male fantasies is a legitimate sexual orientation and that anyone who disagrees is a closed-minded bigot.

On to the show.

The first episode begins with two crates being airlifted by helicopter into the driveway of the McMansion in which the contestants for the twins’ vaginas — I mean hearts — will be living. One of the crates is blue and the other is pink (natch). Inside the crates are twelve men and twelve women, all waiting to see who the hot chick they’ll be competing for is. Mind you, they’ve got no idea they’re there for twins yet. As the crates come down, the men are hopping up and down like a bunch of Red Bull-saturated simians, screaming and yelling for a glimpse of the poontang (I’m sure I heard the word “poontang”). One of the twins comes out to greet the two crates and lets the women out first. The women squeal with excitement at being on television or whatever, and then the twin orders the box of men opened. The men come out and actually pump their fists downward and together in that stupid bodybuilder pose and bark like they’ve just seen Arsenio Hall in order to illustrate just how pumped they are that they might get the chance to pork the chick they see in front of them. But they don’t know the half.

The 24 contestants spend the evening trying to impress the woman they’re there to compete for, completely unaware that every time she leaves the room, it’s actually her twin sister that comes back to hang out. Makeoutery occurs, blah blah. The next day, one twin gets everyone together for a pool party (woooo, bikinis!!) and makes the announcement that she was born with another part. (Ha! Get it? She made the dudes think she used to have a dick! Sick!) Then the other twin comes out. The reaction from the men makes the previous evening’s ape impressions look dignified, while the women just look sort of shocked. Mind you, at this point the implication is that whoever wins the contest is going to be having sex with both twins. Seriously.

So, for about five episodes the twins force the contestants to humiliate themselves in various ways in order to stay on the show (bowl of goat dicks, anyone?) and make out with everyone in sight at every possible opportunity in between pole dancing sessions. Nothing new (I mean, is there a show on MTV that doesn’t include pole dancing and chicks making out?). But once they get down to the last few contestants, they really start going off, because now that they’ve separated the wheat from the chaff and whittled it down to two girls and two boys (isn’t it odd how that worked out?), it’s time to get serious. In what might be the most insane hour of television ever broadcast, they go to visit the families of the four remaining contestants, Scotty, Trevor, Rosie, and Rebecca.

At Trevor’s house, things get a little weird. His parents, it is noted, are religious and conservative. When they are taken aback that their son has brought home two “bisexual” twins who look like they just got in from a porn shoot, they’re branded reactionaries and told that their objections are akin to racism, that they’re completely backward and unreasonable. It almost blew my mind to see such an obvious refusal on the part of everyone involved to call attention to what was really going on. You see, the parents might be dicks for having a problem with bisexuality, but that wasn’t the deal. They were visibly worried that their son was being manipulated by two incestuous strippers, but everyone pretended that their disapproval stemmed from homophobia. It was unbelievable. The twins, noting how uncomfortable Trevor’s parents were, offered to help Trevor’s mother do the dishes, then proceeded to purposely bend over repeatedly and expose their entire asses to Trevor’s mother and father, both of whom looked as if they were about to die of embarrassment. They were purposely behaving wildly inappropriately, but the message was that the only shameful element of the entire encounter was the fact that the parents disapproved. Come on. Who the fuck wouldn’t disapprove of their child bringing someone home who made lewd sexual comments and bared their ass all night?

I thought it couldn’t get more ridiculous, but then they went to Rosie’s house. Rosie is a go-go dancer in Staten Island. Rosie’s cousin is an actual lesbian. Rosie’s mother has never heard anything about her daughter being gay before. Watching a room full of people each try to pretend not to be offended or flabbergasted by a different thing was actually really entertaining, but I ended up feeling sorry for everyone but the dog, whom the twins hated because Rosie paid too much attention to it (which is a big no-no). The twins, here noting that Rosie’s mother was a bit disconcerted by the announcement that her daughter was a lesbian, scooted over to Rosie and planted a sloppy, lengthy, lascivious kiss on her, as if daring her mother to object and thus prove that she was a homophobe. It was absolutely obscene, an obvious provocation.

The visit with Rebecca’s family was fairly uneventful, but then they went to Scotty’s house, where they had their most successful family visit. Scotty is quite possibly the biggest tool on Earth. His favorite adjective to use to describe the twins was “smokin’,” and when they took him to Las Vegas in the seventh episode, he jumped out of the limo at the hotel and yelled, “Vegas, baby!” while doing the bodybuilder pose mentioned above. He’s from New Jersey (surprise, surprise), and he took the twins there to meet his bros, all of whom have nicknames (Ill Will, Pistol Pete, and Big Chris — I swear), and his family. The twins wore red headbands as skirts and matching red bra tops with tassels all over them, which would come in handy when they got Scotty’s mother and aunt, who are Jewish, to do the “Hava Nagila” and to drink Manischevitz body shots from between their breasts (I’m not kidding). The twins basically offered to fuck Scotty’s parents during dinner and spent the entire evening shaking their tits all over the place. They even leaned out the windows of the SUV as they left the house and shook their tasseled breasts at his family while waving goodbye. Check out the episode highlights.

Ah, love.

In the end it came down to Trevor and Rebecca. I know it’s a shock that it came down to a boy and a girl, but it did. The deal was that the twins would each choose which of the remaining two they were in love with, and if they ended up choosing the same person, then that person would have to choose between them (MTV must’ve gotten a lot of complaints from outraged parents, without which I truly believe they would have had the winner walk away with both twins). They both chose Trevor, he chose one of them, the couple lived happily ever after. Try not to faint.

There are several problems here:

No one on this show save a few of the women who were kicked off in the early episodes is actually a lesbian or bisexual. It’s all a show, and one that’s being put on to titillate a male audience and a female audience that has been conditioned to conceive of its own sexuality in terms of what gives men boners. Isn’t it neat how in the end the twins both chose a man, thus reassuring the universe that everything’s still alright, that men needn’t fear that women can do without them?

This show is openly promoting the idea that incest is hot, as long as it’s between two women (but two guys doing it is grooooss!). Apparently there’s no form of degradation that is too outrageous to ask women to submit to and pretend to like — ON NATIONAL TELEVISION in front of an audience of adolescents.

Why would anyone be willing to eat a sheep’s eye in order to ingratiate themselves with a pair of morally repugnant assholes who’ve constructed their self-worth around how successfully they can use their “sexuality” to manipulate people? It’s ridiculous that people should be engaging in contests for affection, even if that affection does come in the form of a porn fantasy.

I realize that a large proportion (if not all) of the women on this show were there to get exposure on television. Why is there a seemingly unlimited supply of women willing to pretend to be gay, expose themselves, and repeatedly degrade themselves in front of a national audience for a minuscule chance at Z-list celebrity? That was a rhetorical question.

It’s absurd that the producers of this show are pretending that this parade of narcissism, humiliation, and vapidity is about “finding love.” In fact, it’s ridiculous that they’re claiming it’s about anything but a bunch of warped, shallow people seeking whatever kind of power appeals most to them (the power to use women for the men, and the power to give men boners for the women).

The idea that anyone who objects to this steaming pile of misogyny, objectification, dehumanization, degradation, and indignity is a bigot is incredible. There’s nothing I hate more than hearing people who are behaving like immoral shitheads co-opting the language of the oppressed to defend their behavior in the face of completely justified outrage.

These twins are completely evil, though I don’t know whose fault that is. They’re fulfilling the expectations of a porn-sick, frat boy-centered society at every possible level. They’ve absorbed the message that women’s power lies in our ability to induce boners, so they’re exercising that power while they have it. I get it, but it’s terrifying. Every time the twins got the slightest inkling that someone was paying attention to anything or anyone besides themselves, they became visibly incensed. They wouldn’t brook anyone in the house forming attachments to anyone but themselves, which they proved by forcing the contestants to stab life-size cardboard cutouts of their fellow housemates with giant butcher knives. In the course of this show, people ate animals’ penises, licked several pounds of frosting off of a mannequin, dressed up as animals and tried to sell themselves to the twins by saying things like, “I’m a duck and I like to fuck,” allowed their parents to be sexually harassed and even physically molested, got into fist fights that resulted in their asses being exposed on national television, and who the fuck knows what else, all in order to get the chance to be on television and/or fuck a pair of evil twins. I’m pretty sure that means we’ve either hit rock bottom, or that we can expect to see people doing anal on the next season of A Shot at Love.

Well, the attraction is probably the incest, yeah, but “and even their own father can’t tell them apart”…what’s the point of having two completely identical playthings? Is it to have a spare in case you break one? Shouldn’t one of them have a moustache and be evil or something?

I’ve always wondered why in our culture it is apparently ok to commit incest with your sister. Seriously, the thought of kissing either of my two sisters on the mouth makes me want to gauge my own eyes out and go into exile (Oedipus was right!). True, I’m not gay, but it’s because THEY’RE MY SISTERS!!!! ew. That this is eroticized has always freaked me out. Thanks for dealing with this nasty aspect of the patriarchy. Women are supposed to have no boundaries whatsoever, apparently.

You’re right, it has to be satire. It was the bio that convinced me. No one on earth is that absurd.

I think the attraction to twins is characteristic of the simplistic sexual thinking of porn culture. The idea is so nauseatingly reductionist “If ONE perfect hot sex object is awesome, then TWO perfect hot sex objects must be DOUBLY awesome!!!!” It’s the three-some fantasy on steroids, maybe because it’s easier to turn sexual desire into math if the two women are literally identical. It’s the homogenization of women and the Stepford wives all over again (don’t you know women are all basically identical sexual robots), only this time the fantasy’s incarnated as twins – the only real-life identical women.

THIS is why porn culture is bad for sexuality – it’s not creative because it doesn’t see anything except superficial differences between women. These two women look the same, so they must be the same (“even their own father can’t tell them apart!!!”). Until we understand the nuances between individuals (and therefore understand that it only makes sense to fall in love with ONE twin – the one you’re actually compatible with), there’s no “chance at love” here.

This show is an insult to sexuality. It reverberates with Hustler of Hollywood’s slogan–“Relax, it’s just sex.” The media/sex industry persistently gives us an immature, anti-intellectual, fragmented view of sexuality making it both (as Jean Kilbourne stated) more and less than it actually is. Much of American media portrays the sex act as being the determinant of personal value (“be fuckable or die” as you say) and at the same time as a mere act, limited to behavioral terms and void of any meaning and intimacy. This is the paradox, or conundrum of American sexuality that largely goes unevaluated. It seems that for the most part, there is not an outlet for dialogue/exploration of human sexuality as a holistic experience that involves people with inherent rights and value. Commercialism and consumerism have taken sex minimized it into a commodity. There’s always a feeling that the intellectual level at which the media presents sexuality is limited to a junior high locker room level. I find this show and shows like it to be particularly insulting for homosexuals and bisexuals, treating these sexual preferences almost as if they are circus freak-show acts to be gawked at because they’re supposed to appeal to something base within the viewer.

Nine Deuce, have you ever commented on The Suicide Girls phenomenon? If so, I’d love to read your blog. If not, I think you should.

Exposure does not equal understanding! It seems that there is an unspoken myth that if one exposes her/himself to sexuality, this is somehow enlightening. Popular culture exposes us to sexual acts/behaviors in excess but does not lend to our understanding of what sexuality means.

Jesus fucking Christ. Not a fucking day goes by that I want to murder half the television executives in the world for turning my sexuality into a three ring (or orifice) show. This shit is a direct hate crime against homosexuals. I’m not kidding. It is moral excrement of the highest order. From what you’ve described, I’ve probably seen porn less objectionable than this. That’s pretty sad, considering how anti-pornography I am.

I have no idea how shit like this is shown on public television or how it doesn’t violate obscenity laws in all 50 states. No wait, I do know. While holding hands with someone of the same sex in the mall might be morally reprehensible and get me kicked out of stores, making out with my twin sister and acting like a porn-bot will get me a record deal and a television show.

Gah. Shit fuck damn. I almost regret reading this post, 9-2, because I surmise I would have been better off not knowing how the lows to which our culture can sink. In the 20 or so years in which I might willingly procreate (more unlikely by the day), I’m sure that television will be some sort of learning tool to which we can educate children on the atrocities human kind is capable of. When we do lessons on the Holocaust or the genocide in Rwanda, I’ll be able to turn on A Double Shot of Love to knock the point home.

I think I originally meant that has a hyperbole. Now, I’m not so sure.

Uh, no, I haven’t, because I’m not a dork. You’re smart enough to know the difference between that shit and what’s going on here. There might be a few thousand teenage girls/women fantasizing about dating the Weasleys (WTF? They look like the missing members of Black Sabbath), but that ain’t shit compared to a worldwide culture of degradation and dehumanization of women.

Context: For as long as I can remember, I’ve been utterly bewildered by the oft-referenced obsession men have with getting the chance to bang twin sisters. I mean, shit, there’s even an episode of Fantasy Island about it. But I never really gave it much thought and just assumed, as I am wont to do, that it couldn’t possibly mean what I thought it meant, that there’s no way people are that gross.

That’s what you were talking about. People wanting to have sex with twins. And I’m pointing out that it isn’t merely the dreaded MEN(!) who harbour those predilections.

For Christ’s sake, who needs it? It doesn’t take a scientific study to tell us that men are generally more interested in degrading women than vice versa. That some women are jumping on the bandwagon doesn’t change that. And that isn’t essentialism, it’s cultural observation.

I have to digress for a second. What is the fucking deal with dudes being into twins? Could it actually be that men delight in the idea that women would be willing to commit incest for their viewing pleasure? Goddamn it, I hope not. But I think that’s it. I mean, the majority of male sexuality in this culture revolves around domination and degradation, which is where the male desire to see women pretend to be gay, submit to unenjoyable sex acts, etc. comes from, so it’s only logical, but I really don’t want to believe it.

?

I don’t think you’re on to much of anything. It’s more of a “Twice the fun” type situation, so far as I can determine. I’d suggest you actually speak to people who harbour that fetish and ask them what it’s all about rather than making presumptions. There are plenty of venues for that line of questioning out there, I’d imagine.

Whatever, dude. As if being turned on at the thought that you could get twins to commit incest ins’t completely in line with the current dynamic of male sexuality, which completely conflates sex with power.

At the risk of being a dork . . . okay, who am I kidding? I’m a dork, a geek, and a nerd all at once. Anyway, I’m kind of shy even on the internet, but I couldn’t let James’s nonsense pass. I happen to read fanfic myself, and although I prefer to avoid stories about incest I know that it’s a kink some people like in their fiction. There are two reasons why this is not the same thing as what 9-2 was criticizing.

First, fanfic culture is not mainstream. Even within fanfic communities, incest is considered kind of a weird kink and is something that a writer would be expected to warn for at the beginning of a story so that readers who are looking for a story about a non-sexual relationship between siblings don’t read an incest story by mistake and get squicked, disturbed, or triggered. Most people in any given fandom do not want to read incest. The only exceptions I can think of off the top of my head are Supernatural and a couple of the smaller manga fandoms where incest is in the original material and the original was targeted at a pretty narrow audience. In contrast, the threesome-with-twins fantasy is mainstream, is often assumed to be a fantasy that every guy has, and doesn’t seem to be considered potentially disturbing by the culture that propagates it.

Secondly and much more importantly, fan fiction is purely fictional, whereas the thing that set off the original post was a LIVE-ACTION show with a pair of REAL TWINS. Live-action porn appealing to this fantasy would have to use REAL TWINS. In my experience, most fanfic readers/writers who gravitate toward the more disturbing kinks (like incest or teacher/student sex) do not ever expect or even want to see real people act out their fantasies. Most of them have a good grasp of the concept that some things that are okay in fiction should never happen in real life. (That’s not to say that I don’t question the sexual power dynamics that are romanticized, glamorized, or normalized in fanfic, novels, manga, etc. Written or drawn romances and erotica/porn can send harmful messages about what’s good and what’s normal. But I draw a line between that and live-action porn, which by its very nature requires real people to engage in real sex acts.) Based on 9-2’s description, it looks like the guys in that show really expected to have a threesome with a pair of real twins, which would probably involve not just having sex with both sisters but also watching the sisters engage in sexual acts with each other. And it looks like the guys thought that was a great thing. Goodness knows I’m no fan of incest in fanfic, but there’s a world of difference between the way fanfic readers who do like fictional incest approach the fantasy and the fantasy/reality divide and the behavior of the guys 9-2 described.

Some men display a certain pecular attitude when the subject is gendered female. They act as if all women in the “fuckable” catagory are identical. So when they fantasize about boinking twins, they are subconsciously imagining the thrill of fucking many women at once.

Plus they enjoy the idea that they “made” two women humilate and denigrate themselves. Incest is kinda gross, yanno. Even animals won’t go there.

Speaking of which, not many animals are into bondage or torture porn. Wonder what the evo psych fools would make of that?

Fanfic…yeah, there is some unbelievably sick stuff out there, but it isn’t nearly as mainstream as what you get on TV, of course.

Lesbian incest…well, that’s just another quirky offshoot of lesbianism, which as we all know is there to allow women to attract men, or to amuse themselves when the men are away. Oh, and there’s some incest involved. Similarly, I guess, the female pedophile with the underage boy is just a lucky lad having a good time, with some old fashioned legal issues thrown in.

As an aside, the idea of two absolutely identical people (like the Icky twins) having sex…is that not the ultimate narcissism?

Personally, though, from the highlights, it’s not the fact that they were bisexual and twins that bothered me the most. I mean, if they had been wearing, you know, clothes, and not having family members of potential lovers or whatever drink things out of their cleavage and so on, I think I could get my head around there being two of them.

“And you are honestly telling me you’ve never happened across the concept of Weasley Twins slashfic? Never?”

Ok, as someone who actually did have a Weasley twin thing for about 5 minutes, I suppose I can offer some insight here. See, I might like the Weasley twins (but I’d never have sex with either of them since, hey, they’re just too damn young), but the difference between my attraction and the attraction most men have to twins…I don’t want to fuck them both at the same time, nor do I wish to see the two twins fuck each other. There’s also one twin that I favor more than the other, and if they weren’t so damn young, I would still likely only fuck one rather than both of them because in real life I wouldn’t want to have the weirdness involved in having fucked two brothers. I know this for a fact because I have had the opportunity to fuck brothers on two occasions and I did not take it either time. Fucking people that closely related is almost certain to cause some serious problems unless they are people you barely know and never intend to see again.

When I was a teenager in high school, there was a a set of identical male twins all the girls fawned over. But even then, the girls favored one boy over the other and I never had any reason to believe that the girls were actually interested in having sex or a relationship with both of them at the same time.

“Incest is kinda gross, yanno. Even animals won’t go there.”

Uh, no offense, but clearly you have never spent much time around animals. With dogs, for instance, if a female comes into heat, any male dog will try to have sex with her. Even if that dog is her son, brother, or father.

That is because you see women as individuals, Deuce. If you saw all women as being muchly the same, then it would make more sense possibly. You have to think like a particularly gross sexist man, lol. Or I’m talking out my ass, again.

Do you prefer to be called 92?

My enormous tomcat likes to play with his prey as long as possible before he kills them, but he is always so careful to keep those thick claws away from me. And apparently some form of recently discovered sea-life cuts open the skin of a female in order to insert sperm under the skin. Which is my way of saying that while animals can refrain from hurting something they like, they also have very different ideas of what “hurting” entails.

It’s funny how we can see the connection between the desire to dominate women and the desire to see women degrade themselves with things like incest, and that gross sexist men see it, but that no one else can pick up the connection. Does that mean we’re just like gross sexist men? Because that’s what I’ve been told lately on some of these threads (in many, many stupid deleted comments).

You can call me whatever you want. Deuce, ND, 92, 9, 2, 9-2, Nine, flaming cunt. I get them all.

I don’t actually have a chinchilla, but the thought of one being into BDSM was really funny to me when I wrote it.

Uh, no offense, but clearly you have never spent much time around animals. With dogs, for instance, if a female comes into heat, any male dog will try to have sex with her. Even if that dog is her son, brother, or father.”

Much as i love them, dogs are a man-made species, forced to live unnatural lives. Their closest relative , the wolf, has strict rules about incest. Males who attempt relations with mom or other close female relatives are forced out of the pack. Same goes with coyotes.

(Not trying to be pedantic or anything. I just find animal behavior interesting.)

I don’t know any adults who watch MTV. I wouldn’t have known this show existed if you hadn’t blogged about it. (I forgive you.)

They are training the kids young nowadays, aren’t they?

Did you notice how the twins are referred to as the “bisexual twins” throughout the clips? Since the piece I saw was clearly part of the season finale, you would think the participants would know them well enough to refer to them by name. But no, they are the “bisexual twins!” No names needed!

So what will MTV do for an encore once this particular porn fantasy show is played out? BDSM lovin’ triplets?

This was horrific, but once again, ND, I congratulate you on a job well done. Thanks for putting up with this so the rest of us don’t have to.

What got to me the most was how they were telling Trevor’s parents that he was going to have to choose between them if they won, and then he kept kissing and touching both of them. It was like he was saying, “One’s as good as the other!” which really ought to offend any twins out there who aren’t directly involved with this kind of crap.

Whatever, dude. As if being turned on at the thought that you could get twins to commit incest…

Here’s one point I’m going to nitpick on, although I’m pretty sure that my conclusion is not an sort of improvement. My guess is that the dudes furiously jerking off to the idea of twins do not even entertain the idea that they are sisters. To the male gaze, they are simply two identical objects for him to consume. And what could be greater than one hot girl than two? I seriously do not think that the majority of men who are into twins even recognize that the identical girls making out with each other even have identities, families, and lives outside of catering to their cock. They don’t have sisters, mothers, aspirations, or hobbies. For a man to be “into” incest, he has to acknowledge that he is basically watching two human beings with the same parents fucking. Since he doesn’t see them as human beings, or as existing in any sort of context outside of the warm feelings in his pants, I’m fairly sure that the gravity of the idea of sisters making out did not occur to him.

Which is why this show even made it on the air and past the obsenity laws in the first place. Because the twins are objects in the male gaze and never deviate from that role, nobody takes the time to think of them as living breathing human beings that are actually sisters. If we thought of the twins as people, than the idea of incest would instantly repulse the entire nation and render this crap more objectionable than nipples in the Superbowl. But since the women cease to exist outside of their use to please penis, nobody gives a shit about incest.

Which is why this show is so horrifying. I look at it and see incest. I know the media has a bad track record with misogyny, but for their love of objectifying women to even overcome the cultural repulsiveness of incest is truly a testament to how pervasive sexism is.

“Same goes with cats, Faith. You don’t see those types of behaviors in large wild cats. Packs and Prides strictly guard their gene pools.”

I’m not going to get into a big debate over inbreeding amongst animals. But arguing that animals engage in inbreeding simply because they have been domesticated is a bit much. Domesticated animals are not the only ones who ever engage in inbreeding.

@Jenn: I agree and disagree that the realization of incest is not important. It is not important to the whacking off part of sex, but I think it’s somewhat important to the arousal part of sex. Sex, as sexperts like to tell us when they are advocating “spicing up” one’s sex life, is 90% mental, so, when genuine sexual desire is lacking, something exciting or anxiety producing can be substituted. Sex with twins is more “exciting” than sex with sisters, which is more “exciting” than sex with two unrelated women, because twins are believed to share a closeness unrivaled by other relationships. That creates a sort of synergism between the lesbian/threesome taboo and the incest taboo, which makes the fantasy extra hottt.

Also, I agree with you about the incest angle being unperceived enough in the general consciousness that it kept the show from being yanked, but I think the other part of it is that lesbian sex is often not seen as “real” sex on account of the lack of PIV. Apparently, lesbianism is just something two (or more) conventionally attractive women do to titillate the menfolk.

Sex with twins is more “exciting” than sex with sisters, which is more “exciting” than sex with two unrelated women, because twins are believed to share a closeness unrivaled by other relationships.

I actually think that you’re right, sex with twins is more “exciting” than sex with sisters, but sex with sisters would probably be labeled more obscene. If you have two women that are not identical, but identical enough to be related—and they say as much openly—then the idea that you are wanking to incest is pretty obvious. You can ignore that obviousness with twins, which the culture at large, even outside a sexual context, tends to recognize as two bodies with the same identity. This kind of insensitivity to the individuality of twins is only worsened by the objectification of the male sexual gaze. While sisters are generally considered two separate people related by blood, twins are generally not.

That creates a sort of synergism between the lesbian/threesome taboo and the incest taboo, which makes the fantasy extra hottt.

Well, the reduction of lesbianism to something women do to please men is obviously part and parcel of the twin fantasy. However, I think that it’s more of the novelty of having two identically hot women than the incest that men approve of. Sex is generally contrived as a “the more the better” kind of thing, in which the more women you can have at once, the better. Since twins are two people, you are having a threesome without the pesky problem of having to deal with two dissimilar demands of nonidentical women. It’s basically like finding the perfectly submissive woman to your sexual needs, and then cloning her. You’re not having sex with two different women, you are having sex with two same women. There is also the feeling that the twins will not compete with each other, and that their physical similarity means that you don’t have to spend mental energy on figuring out how to not insinuate that one is more attractive than the other or minimize conflict in what can be a emotional disaster. It’s basically all the fun of a threesome without the effort. Also, remember that misogynists are generally very self-entitled. The fantasy that the universe has conspired to create not one, but two women that perfectly suit his every whim meshes with his ideal perception of how reality ought to provide him with the maximum number of women to consume without requiring him to expend any additional mental effort over that required of a monogamous relationship to please them.

but I think the other part of it is that lesbian sex is often not seen as “real” sex on account of the lack of PIV

This I totally agree with, and didn’t calculate in with how I’m trying to examine this gross phenomena. It also might be the case that it’s not considered real incest if there is a lack of penetration or penis. Whereas, a man having sex with his sister is clearly incest, sisters fooling around together is a lesser incest, and twins an even lesser incest—the last being irrelevant in a calculus of “depravity” to the normally socialized male, the second being obscene but strangely titillating, and the first being totally unacceptable. Although, the most “extreme” forms of incest that feature tacit domination overtones such as that between a son and his mother (supposed to be taken as his transformation from a boy who feels love and admiration of a female figure to a man who feels nothing but animal lust and the need to degrade the woman who formerly had control of him) and that between a father and a daughter (something that really doesn’t need much explanation, owing to the extreme modeling of the patriarchal domain of the father over his daughter and the appeal of the extreme degradation of the woman for an audience). In short, there is a perceived continuum of incest in pornsick minds. The lesser forms of incest are fine to jerk one off too, greater forms are not. However, this line is more likely to be shifted or totally erased the more the sex act conforms to patriarchal norms or features a “give the bitch what she deserves” theme of dominating formerly dominant women, destroying the emotional vulnerability of a normal familial bond, or extending the perceived ownership of the male over the female to the sexual realm.

That was a really gross bout of theorizing there. I feel a need to take a shower.

I read your post, but I haven’t read all the comments yet, so forgive me if someone’s already said this, but, this part?

The deal was that the twins would each choose which of the remaining two they were in love with, and if they ended up choosing the same person, then that person would have to choose between them (MTV must’ve gotten a lot of complaints from outraged parents, without which I truly believe they would have had the winner walk away with both twins). They both chose Trevor, he chose one of them, the couple lived happily ever after. Try not to faint.

What the heck? These women are sisters. How can one of them possibly be “happily ever after” if she supposedly kept her sister from being with the man she supposedly “loves?” This is the most idiotic bullshit ever. These women are being treated like mannequins–they’re there to look hot, but they don’t have feelings or anything.
Now, of course, I’m guessing that there’s no real “love” going on here anywhere (I’d say this of most reality dating shows). So sure, it’s a sham, but I’m sure you’ve got people believing the premise of the sham all over the place, in which case they must be thinking, “oh, women go stabbing their sisters in the back all the time, and they don’t give a shit.” This really does fuel misogyny.

Oh, and this?they got Scotty’s mother and aunt, who are Jewish, to do the “Hava Nagila” and to drink Manischevitz body shots from between their breasts (I’m not kidding).
Woo-hoo, exotification and stereotyping of an entire ethnic group! How absolutely lovely.

I don’t know if anyone here has ever read Hell House, but that’s what I think of when I read about the Icky twins. Do you think we’re going to see outright violence against womin on TV soon? We’ve been psychologically damaged enough to allow it. How I miss the Powerpuff Girls.

To isme: Fuck, I think that’s a sign of how fucked up the patriarchy is that I didn’t imediately consider that outright violence. I don’t watch television, I don’t interact with other humin beings much and I still said that. Thanks for making me more aware.